The study conducted by doctoral student, Erikka Loftfield, at Yale University School of Public Health as part of her dissertation work for the U.S. National Cancer Institute, discovered that drinking coffee decreases the risk of developing malignant melanoma—and the more you drink; the less your cancer risk overall.
This study examined questionnaire answers submitted by participants from Detroit, California, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and Florida, and supports previous data collected that credited coffee with the ability to protect the body against less deadly forms of skin cancer when it was found that java mitigating the damage to skin cells caused by ultraviolet rays.
Using data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and AARP over a 10-year period and considering melanoma risk factors—such as smoking history, body mass index, age, gender, ultraviolet radiation exposure, alcohol intake, and physical activity level Loftfield says, “[The study] found that 4 or more cups of coffee per day was associated with [approximately] a 20-percent reduced risk of malignant melanoma.”
Keep in mind that all study participants were cancer-free initially.
The study revealed that those participants who admitted drinking the most coffee daily were protected from melanoma, the most fatal form of skin cancer in the U.S., compared to participants who drank little to zero coffee each day.
According to Web MD, 77,000 new cases of melanoma and 9,500 skin cancer deaths occurred in the U.S. in 2013.
Source: Web MD
